Running back Cam Akers was traded Wednesday to the Minnesota Vikings, days after the Los Angeles Rams made him a healthy scratch for a game against the San Francisco 49ers.
The trade ends Akers’s up-and-down relationship with Rams Coach Sean McVay and reunites the back with Vikings Coach Kevin O’Connell, who was his offensive coordinator for two seasons in Los Angeles.
Minnesota is sending a conditional sixth-round pick in the 2026 draft to Los Angeles for Akers and a conditional 2026 seventh-rounder, the Vikings said in a news release. The fourth-year player, selected by the Rams in the second round of the 2020 draft, must still pass a physical for the trade to be completed.
Akers arrives at a Minnesota team that ranks last in the NFL with 69 rushing yards through two games, both losses. According to ESPN, the Vikings are the only team without a rush attempt this season of at least 10 yards. Minnesota’s starting back, Alexander Mattison, has gained 62 yards on 19 carries, just 3.3 yards per attempt.
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In his only game thus far this season, a Week 1 Rams win over the Seattle Seahawks, Akers posted even worse numbers. He ran for just 29 yards on 22 carries (1.3 average) with a touchdown. His mark of negative-41 in rushing yards over expectation, per Next Gen Stats, ranks second-worst in the NFL.
For most of his first three seasons with the Rams, Akers had been the Rams’ top back when healthy. However, Akers split the work in Week 1 with second-year back Kyren Williams, then watched from the bench last week as Williams got nearly all the backfield work in a loss to the 49ers. After that game, McVay told reporters that deactivating Akers was “in the best interest” of the team. On Monday, the Super Bowl-winning coach said the Rams were fielding calls on Akers’s availability and that a possible trade was “the direction that we’re headed.”
“I’m just as confused as everybody else,” Akers had written before Sunday’s game on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. With a shrugging emoji, he added, “I’m blessed though.”
I’m just as confused as everybody else. I’m blessed though 🤷🏾♂️
— Cam akers (@thereal_cam3) September 17, 2023The latest sequence of events followed a tumultuous 2022 season for Akers, who led the Rams with 786 rushing yards and 903 from scrimmage despite leaving the team for three weeks in midseason for what were officially labeled “personal reasons.” According to reports, Akers had come into conflict with the coaching staff and McVay said then that the Rams would try to trade him, but when that did not materialize, the disgruntled back eventually rejoined his squad.
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Upon his return, Akers began to run with more authority than he had showed earlier in the season, and he ended the 2022 campaign with three straight games of over 100 yards and three touchdowns. Around that time, McVay said that “it would be silly, based on what a great job he’s done, to think of anything differently than [Akers] being a big part of what you want to do moving forward.” This season had barely begun, though, before it was apparent that Akers’s tenure in Los Angeles had taken another downturn.
In 2021, the Rams’ season was still two months away when Akers tore an Achilles’ tendon just before training camp. The injury normally wipes away entire seasons for football players, but Akers surprised many observers by making it back to his team by the end of the regular season, then playing extensively as the Rams made a run through the playoffs all the way to a championship.
“I can’t think of another injury comeback situation that I’ve ever been around that’s even close,” Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said just before that Super Bowl.
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For his first four seasons after the Vikings took him in the third round of the 2019 draft, Mattison had been reliant on injuries to Dalvin Cook for chances to crack Minnesota’s starting lineup. After Cook was released in June following four straight Pro Bowl selections and subsequently signed in August with the New York Jets, Mattison got his chance to be a featured component of the Vikings’ offense, but the early results have been underwhelming.
Among 48 running backs with at least 10 carries thus far this season, Mattison has earned the fourth-worst grade from Pro Football Focus. Having played behind a former Florida State star in Cook, Wednesday’s trade pairs Mattison with another former Seminoles standout, with Akers having replaced Cook in FSU’s lineup after he went to the NFL in 2017.
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